The Littlest Boy Cold War Backpack Nuke

pauljs75
As for the history of plans to use such nukes it sounds like a fairly crazy mission, having to lug that heavy rucksack around.

That was the belief of most anyone who was in line to get stuck with one. Except for the real gung-ho veins-in-your-teeth John Wayne types who longed for the day. Each cat his own rat, I suppose.

There's likely an entire team assigned to that thing to ensure it gets planted, and if such a mission were "go" there are no guarantees of anyone on that team coming back.

There were a lot of plans. Basically, yeah, like the article says, you had trained SADM teams. The dive entry specialty team in each company was pretty much always 'the' SADM team. Some companies had one or two SADM teams in addition. But in reality, everyone at Flint got the "this is how this thing works" training. In the event of a Soviet incursion, there were WAY more SADMs in the WSA than there were SADM teams, which was a dead giveaway that you were going to be lugging that thing into action, ready or not. There were racks of these things in the WSA. They were there until 1990.

Entertainingly, I made this post back in November, I see the guys in the article said the same thing - it was our general belief that the timer was a dummy and you were going ride the thunder when you hit the arming switch.

Most plans involved three guys and a vehicle to get you close as possible, that thing was pretty clumsy to ruck. The whole idea was to get in position in the Fulda Gap and let fly. There were all sorts of confidence boosting scenarios you were informed of that involved your expected lifetimes in case you didn't get there first and encountered Spetsnaz, and the unlikelihood you'd get away even if you did it perfectly, and you might as well sit there and guard the thing because you weren't going to get to the rally points at any rate.

mbkennel
The ones that size require significant tritium boosting, and tritium decays and requires significant professional handling and maintenance.

Well, they do if you care about efficiency. However, the general category of "suitcase" devices such as the Russian design are not boosted, but are a crappy topology changer with heinously bad efficiencies. The US had one topology design that was, AFAIK, never tested and was discontinued before it went into production due to it not meeting changing DOE safety standards.

bobs_uruncle
As far as HAARP you do understand how it can be manipulated, right? By using "tipping points" the injected billions of watts can induce massive disturbances in earths systems. These people have had decades to learn through experimentation.

Cheers - Dave

HAARP never saw the day it could inject "billions of Watts". 3.6 MW is all you get. The place runs off of four locomotive diesel generators.

twitchy
Don't forget about the SADM, Special Atomic Demolitions Munitions, they are roughly backpack size as well and, IMO, probably responsible for the elevated tritium levels (700 times what was expected) at the WTC site as well as the Pallisades NY seismic spikes on Sept. 11 just prior to each tower's collapse.

A SADM would have blown the buildings to smithereenies. It only takes 5 pounds of overpressure to strip the facade off a building of that type. And the radiation would have been a bit hard to ignore.

Bedlam

twitchy
Don't forget about the SADM, Special Atomic Demolitions Munitions, they are roughly backpack size as well and, IMO, probably responsible for the elevated tritium levels (700 times what was expected) at the WTC site as well as the Pallisades NY seismic spikes on Sept. 11 just prior to each tower's collapse.

And the radiation would have been a bit hard to ignore.

Didn't a previous poster state that tritium measurement levels were 700 times normal in the immediate area on 9/11?



700 times would seem to qualify as hard to ignore I would think, no?

reply to post by Riffrafter


I'm talking harder radiation than you'll get from tritium. Actually, you wouldn't expect to see tritium as a residue from a device of this type except as boost gas and initiator residue. Which wouldn't be much. A topo weapon wouldn't even have boost gas. There were more than enough tritium sources in the building and planes to account for the traces in the water.

It isn't just elevated levels of tritium at the WTC...
There was a loss of radio communication just prior to each collapse, the seismic data from Pallisades showing large spikes just prior to each collapse, the reports of explosions from rescue personnel and eye witnesses that were ignored by the 9/11 commission, the thermal hotspots and molten steel which persisted literally for months in subterranean and oxygen starved pockets despite the constant deluge of water, the decontamination proceedures which were consistent with a radiological site i.e. spreading sand and spraying water as well as removal and destruction of clothing from the site, the elevated levels of tritium which can't be explained by exit signs as they were removed during prior renovations years before 9-11, the strange health issues of rescue and cleanup workers, the curious anomalies discsussed by Dr. Judy Woods including burnt darker colored cars for blocks while lighter colored cars were not is consistent with a burst of electromagnetic radiation, and the pulverization of all that concrete (the energy for which is unaccounted for in any of the collapse models)... and aside from all that, does it LOOK like a fire related collapse with an intact underlying structure considering the towers literally accelerated during the collapses? Here's a small yield nuclear detonation for comparison...




Edit:
It's also very important to note that those elevated tritium levels (700 times what was anticipated) were also discovered after months of decontamination procedures and water dousing, god only knows what it was before the readings were actually taken as the scrap metal and other debris was removed under the strictest security ever given to scrap and rubbish by the same company that was contracted to clean up the F. Murrah Federal Building in OK.

twitchy
It isn't just elevated levels of tritium at the WTC...
There was a loss of radio communication just prior to each collapse,

Not sure about that one - got a hard reference to it that's not on a truther site? Nevertheless, you will note that the radios did not fail. The power outside the immediate area did not go off. Aircraft didn't tumble from the air, there are video recordings from the nearby area indicating the cameras didn't fail and the tapes weren't wiped. I'm sure a few minutes thought would give you more examples.

the seismic data from Pallisades showing large spikes just prior to each collapse,

There were planes going boom into buildings. Beyond that, there were structural failures going on in the buildings.

the reports of explosions from rescue personnel and eye witnesses that were ignored by the 9/11 commission,

A nuke would be hard to miss.

the thermal hotspots and molten steel which persisted literally for months in subterranean and oxygen starved pockets despite the constant deluge of water,

First, you don't know it was molten steel. Unless you can show me an analysis? Or how much, if any, there was. And are you suggesting that the hot spots were hot due to residual radiation? There's a definite difference between how a physicist would use 'hot' referring to radioactivity and 'hot' due to thermal energy. Molten materials of any sort don't stay molten longer because they were nuked. In fact, after aboveground tests, the struts of the towers were often found much more intact than you'd have expected, and not molten. Or dustified.

the decontamination proceedures which were consistent with a radiological site i.e. spreading sand and spraying water as well as removal and destruction of clothing from the site,

Spreading sand and spraying water also goes with fires under the rubble. And while if I was removing you from a contaminated area, I would indeed remove and bag your clothes and scrub you down with detergent, that would be to get you out of the area with as little surface contamination as possible. I would not then proceed to scoop up the contaminated material into dump trucks and truck it around the state. Removing clothing is not some magic indication of radioactivity as an isolated act. You have to look at what else is going on.

the elevated levels of tritium which can't be explained by exit signs as they were removed during prior renovations years before 9-11,

There were a lot of other tritium sources. NIST lists them out. Tritium isn't a byproduct of nuclear detonations. Some parts of the weapon use tritium - notably the initiator and boost gas systems. However, that's not a LOT of tritium, and a weapon as small as you'd have to have used wouldn't need boosting. Recall that there wasn't a blinding flash of light followed by the dispersal of the buildings as rubble over the surrounding 10 square miles. It didn't even strip the facade. In fact, there really isn't any indication of a large explosive having been used at all, much less a nuke.

the strange health issues of rescue and cleanup workers,

Nothing like inhaling a lot of crap to make you healthy, eh?

the curious anomalies discsussed by Dr. Judy Woods including burnt darker colored cars for blocks while lighter colored cars were not is consistent with a burst of electromagnetic radiation,

Judy is a crank. However, she's a deceptive crank. "Consistent with a burst of electromagnetic radiation" is the part where she's obfuscating that the EM that would do this is the visual spectrum light coming off a nuke. Not radio waves as in an EMP. Did you see a mind-numbingly bright flash of light that would have blinded everyone in the vicinity, set their clothing on fire, and cooked anyone within half a mile? Me either.

and the pulverization of all that concrete (the energy for which is unaccounted for in any of the collapse models)...

Tripe. What effect of a nuke dustifies concrete? Point it out. You can't both have the building stay intact as it falls into a heap AND have explosive effects that powder concrete, because the earth shattering kaboom for concrete powdering also scatters the building over the area, while it destroys all the buildings within several blocks. It didn't even break glass in the area, did it?

and aside from all that, does it LOOK like a fire related collapse with an intact underlying structure considering the towers literally accelerated during the collapses? Here's a small yield nuclear detonation for comparison...

You can't go by appearances. I can show you non-nuclear mushroom clouds. I can show you volcanic eruptions that look like this, but it doesn't prove that there was a volcano under the towers.

eta:

It's also very important to note that those elevated tritium levels (700 times what was anticipated) were also discovered after months of decontamination procedures and water dousing

You would expect the tritiated water to end up in the basement, not stick to the metal. And the half-life of tritium is such that it wouldn't have noticeably declined in months.

twitchy
It isn't just elevated levels of tritium at the WTC...
There was a loss of radio communication just prior to each collapse,

Bedlam
Not sure about that one - got a hard reference to it that's not on a truther site? Nevertheless, you will note that the radios did not fail. The power outside the immediate area did not go off. Aircraft didn't tumble from the air, there are video recordings from the nearby area indicating the cameras didn't fail and the tapes weren't wiped. I'm sure a few minutes thought would give you more examples.

I'm pretty damned sure, it was widely reported in the media and well documented by firefighters and emergency personnel on site. If you want a reference, dig it up, it was all over the news and ATS has a serach function, I've provided sources for that myself here before more than once or perhaps find a source that says there wasn't any loss of communication that isn't from a right wing nutjob site.

twitchy
the seismic data from Pallisades showing large spikes just prior to each collapse,

Bedlam
There were planes going boom into buildings. Beyond that, there were structural failures going on in the buildings.

The data from Pallisades actually shows the impacts of the planes, then clearly shows massive spikes just prior to each collapse, and the falling of the debris... in that order. Hope that doesn't confuse you, but structural failures don't make huge seismic spikes that are consistent with underground detonations, do they?

Bedlam
A nuke would be hard to miss.

Actually it would be hard to recognize in a cloud of atomized concrete wouldn't it?

Bedlam
First, you don't know it was molten steel. Unless you can show me an analysis? Or how much, if any, there was. And are you suggesting that the hot spots were hot due to residual radiation? There's a definite difference between how a physicist would use 'hot' referring to radioactivity and 'hot' due to thermal energy. Molten materials of any sort don't stay molten longer because they were nuked. In fact, after aboveground tests, the struts of the towers were often found much more intact than you'd have expected, and not molten. Or dustified.

Yeah the molten steel is a real stickler for OS preachers, I can't show you an analysis, but I can tell you that Mark Loizeaux and Tully Construction, as well as a number of FEMA and other qualified folks who probably know what steel is all reported 'rivers and pools of molten steel' months later. The hotspots were due to extreme temperatures, however you want to paraphrase it, temperatures which persisted for months despite a constant deluge of water. Dustified?

Bedlam
Spreading sand and spraying water also goes with fires under the rubble. And while if I was removing you from a contaminated area, I would indeed remove and bag your clothes and scrub you down with detergent, that would be to get you out of the area with as little surface contamination as possible. I would not then proceed to scoop up the contaminated material into dump trucks and truck it around the state. Removing clothing is not some magic indication of radioactivity as an isolated act. You have to look at what else is going on.

Spreading sand and spraying water is text book radiological decontamination procedure.

Bedlam
There were a lot of other tritium sources. NIST lists them out. Tritium isn't a byproduct of nuclear detonations. Some parts of the weapon use tritium - notably the initiator and boost gas systems. However, that's not a LOT of tritium, and a weapon as small as you'd have to have used wouldn't need boosting. Recall that there wasn't a blinding flash of light followed by the dispersal of the buildings as rubble over the surrounding 10 square miles. It didn't even strip the facade. In fact, there really isn't any indication of a large explosive having been used at all, much less a nuke.

There were gun sights and watch hands, that's about it. The exit signs were removed during renovations. Nothing that would be consistent with the levels found months later and after relocation and months of heavy dilution. NIST's list doesn't account for anything which would elevate tritium 700 times the expected levels months later and yes tritium is a byproduct... of neutron interaction with helium-3 for example. Recall that light doesn't pass though concrete, and in fact there were a plethora of reports of explosions and seismic data clearly showing a large spike just prior to each collapse. I have no idea where you get 10 mile radius from, the topic of this thread should clear that up for you though.

twitchy
the strange health issues of rescue and cleanup workers,

Bedlam
Nothing like inhaling a lot of crap to make you healthy, eh?

Nohting like a Bush appointed Federal Judge to gag order victims and block law suits for you either, but by stange health issues, I meant rare cancers and illnesses consistent with radioactive contamination, 'crap' you don't get from firefighting normally.

Bedlam
Judy is a crank. However, she's a deceptive crank. "Consistent with a burst of electromagnetic radiation" is the part where she's obfuscating that the EM that would do this is the visual spectrum light coming off a nuke. Not radio waves as in an EMP. Did you see a mind-numbingly bright flash of light that would have blinded everyone in the vicinity, set their clothing on fire, and cooked anyone within half a mile? Me either.

I'm fully aware that Judy is a crank, unfortunately however her's is the only real comprehensive documentation of the bizzare effects on the vehicles several blocks away, and is particularly interesting. As to a 'mind numbingly bright flash of light' from your 'visual spectrum light', well you see photons don't pass through concrete as well as the other nasty stuff, but I bet you knew that. Half a mile? What the heck are you basing that on, you went from ten miles to half a mile and I still don't know if you understand we're talking about a low yield design specific KT yield device contained in a building, not the Tsar Bomba.

Bedlam
Tripe. What effect of a nuke dustifies concrete? Point it out. You can't both have the building stay intact as it falls into a heap AND have explosive effects that powder concrete, because the earth shattering kaboom for concrete powdering also scatters the building over the area, while it destroys all the buildings within several blocks. It didn't even break glass in the area, did it?

Dustifies? I think you mean atomize, and the effect that produces it is called an explosion. The latteral ejection of debris from the WTC site is well known and documented, and destroying 'all the buildings within several blocks' is well, just silly. Are you being arbitrary or are you seriously unaware of the nature and intent of controlled demolitions?

Bedlam
You can't go by appearances. I can show you non-nuclear mushroom clouds. I can show you volcanic eruptions that look like this, but it doesn't prove that there was a volcano under the towers.

Volcano under the building? Really? I could show you a picture of a gorilla in pink chiffon dress but it isn't going to look like the detonation of a KT yield nuclear device.

twitchy
It's also very important to note that those elevated tritium levels (700 times what was anticipated) were also discovered after months of decontamination procedures and water dousing

Bedlam
You would expect the tritiated water to end up in the basement, not stick to the metal. And the half-life of tritium is such that it wouldn't have noticeably declined in months.

edit on 3-2-2014 by Bedlam because: (no reason given)

Tritiated water ending up in the basement isn't the damning issue, it's the tritium found at the Fresh Kills landfill months later after months of dilution and decontamination.

Sorry OP, I honestly didn't meant to turn your thread into a 9-11 drama with bedlam there, but I brought it up because I wholeheartedly believe what we saw on 9/11 was probably, at least in terms of the WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapse, due in part to the use of SADMs.

twitchy

I'm pretty damned sure, it was widely reported in the media and well documented by firefighters and emergency personnel on site.

Yet, the nature of an EMP is not to cause a temporary disruption in communications. It has a fast component that's primarily HF and VHF radio waves, with most of the energy below 30MHz. That component induces overvoltage in circuits with long leads and antennas, and to some extent onto telecom and local electrical distribution. A ground burst of any size would have wrecked any nearby electronics and taken the power grid in the area offline, blowing the TVS's and quite a few transformers. It would have taken a long time to restore power in the entire area, and it would have involved a LOT of stuff being pulled and replaced. Yet, the radios, cell phones, and video recorders of the witnesses did not fail, nor was there a major ConEd rebuild taking weeks to complete. Nor, as I mentioned, were the tapes wiped. Aircraft in the vicinity didn't shut down. Interference with radios in the sense that they are off-line for an extended amount of time yet recover is not at all characteristic of an EMP.

twitchy
The data from Pallisades actually shows the impacts of the planes, then clearly shows massive spikes just prior to each collapse, and the falling of the debris... in that order. Hope that doesn't confuse you, but structural failures don't make huge seismic spikes that are consistent with underground detonations, do they?

Actually, I would expect to see just that if the main structures in the buildings were failing and the floors were pancaking.

Bedlam
Actually it would be hard to recognize in a cloud of atomized concrete wouldn't it?

Not at all. Have you seen films of small nukes going off? We're talking from 10 tons of TNT to 1000, depending on how your putative SADMs were set up prior to the mission, the 911A's (creepy coincidence, or what?) could tune them for yield. You couldn't do it in the field that I know of.

Yeah the molten steel is a real stickler for OS preachers, I can't show you an analysis, but I can tell you that Mark Loizeaux and Tully Construction, as well as a number of FEMA and other qualified folks who probably know what steel is all reported 'rivers and pools of molten steel' months later.

You'd have to be pretty qualified to look at some sort of molten material and immediately know it was steel and not, say, aluminum or glass or whatnot, wouldn't you agree? Unless you get a sample of it and have it looked at metallurgically. I'll give you molten something. But again, what attribute of a SADM would cause characteristic "meltiness" that persists for months?

How about there was a huge fire, lots of heat, followed by burial in an insulating material? Nothing in a nuke would make molten metal hotter or more water resistant. And again, if you look at the aftermath of a nuke historically, it doesn't melt the ground or the support structures. It might evaporate them, but it didn't leave molten puddles of crap that persisted for months.

Dustified?

A term associated with Woods, who theorizes that some sort of energy beam turned the buildings to dust, when she's not theorizing that a nuke did it.

Spreading sand and spraying water is text book radiological decontamination procedure.

Also for fires.

There were gun sights and watch hands, that's about it. The exit signs were removed during renovations. Nothing that would be consistent with the levels found months later and after relocation and months of heavy dilution.

On my planet, they got this:

The fate and removal of tritium from ground zero were investigated, taking into consideration tritium chemistry and water flow originating from the fire fighting, rain, as well as leaks from the Hudson River and broken mains. A box model was developed to describe the above scenario. The model is consistent with instantaneous oxidation of the airplane tritium in the jet-fuel explosion, deposition of a small fraction of HTO at ground zero, and water-flow controlled removal of HTO from the debris.

So taking into account what was in the building and airplanes, along with all the water applied, they got about what they expected to see. 700 times a gnat's ass is still a gnat's ass. It's not like the basement was glowing blue at night. 3.5nC/l is not very much.

and yes tritium is a byproduct... of neutron interaction with helium-3 for example.

Yep, helium-3 will absorb a neutron, emit a proton, and become tritium. But it works best for thermal neutrons, and it's really really rare. You wouldn't expect to find any in the towers. Plus, it's no use in a nuke, they filter it out of weapon boost gas and initiator fill gas at Savannah River.

Recall that light doesn't pass though concrete...

Ah. Well, then your comment - "the curious anomalies discsussed by Dr. Judy Woods including burnt darker colored cars for blocks while lighter colored cars were not is consistent with a burst of electromagnetic radiation" has to go by the wayside. The only reason lighter colored objects are less damaged in a nuclear detonation is that they reflect visible light more than dark colored objects, and thus have less thermal energy transfer. While visible light is EM, as you say, it doesn't pass through concrete. Therefore this curious anomaly is untrue, which I tend to believe.

I'm fully aware that Judy is a crank, unfortunately however her's is the only real comprehensive documentation of the bizzare effects on the vehicles several blocks away, and is particularly interesting. As to a 'mind numbingly bright flash of light' from your 'visual spectrum light', well you see photons don't pass through concrete as well as the other nasty stuff...

Judy's trying to obfuscate by saying "EM radiation", but the actual thing doing the deed for dark vehicles over light colored ones is their reflectivity to light, and generally, only to light in the visual range. Far IR doesn't care what color the car is, extremely bright far UV would ablate the paint and then heat it no matter what color it used to be. Only, as you say, photons don't pass through concrete so well. Neutrons don't care what color it is. So it's bs.

If you have the time, go look at the pictures of which cars burned and which did not, and you'll see a pattern of "if the car was running, it burned", due to sucking up dust and overheating.

...and I still don't know if you understand we're talking about a low yield design specific KT yield device contained in a building, not the Tsar Bomba.

Even tuned down to the minimum, you're talking 10...tons...of...TNT. That's a friggin' HUGE amount of power inside a building. The building wouldn't have just crumbled. Dialed up to 1kT, a SADM would shatter glass in a radius of about a quarter mile of the towers, strip the facade off steel reinforced buildings over a tenth of a mile and rupture the internal organs of anyone within about 500 feet. It only takes 4-5 psi of overpressure to blow a building apart from the inside, and you didn't even see that happen. Plus, SADMs were designed to leave lethal radiation behind as a deterrent to Soviet forces. You've got survivors from inside the building. You wouldn't if it were a SADM.

Dustifies? I think you mean atomize, and the effect that produces it is called an explosion. The latteral ejection of debris from the WTC site is well known and documented, and destroying 'all the buildings within several blocks' is well, just silly. Are you being arbitrary or are you seriously unaware of the nature and intent of controlled demolitions?

No, I mean dustify - it's what Judy claims happened. And yes, it would be an explosion, and we're not talking lateral ejection of debris. We're talking leveling the buildings within a tenth of a mile. You didn't get that nice spherical bang at the base where the building came apart. I can't believe you're serious about this, truly.

Volcano under the building? Really? I could show you a picture of a gorilla in pink chiffon dress but it isn't going to look like the detonation of a KT yield nuclear device.

Yet you're going on about "wow, look, this explosion looks like this one, therefore it's the same". Lots of truthers just like yourself go on about "pyroclastic clouds" and show pics of volcanoes. It's not one. Neither was it a nuclear detonation.

Sorry OP, I honestly didn't meant to turn your thread into a 9-11 drama with bedlam there, but I brought it up because I wholeheartedly believe what we saw on 9/11 was probably, at least in terms of the WTC 1 and WTC 2 collapse, due in part to the use of SADMs.

Yet it has no characteristics of a nuclear explosion. "Probably" is an insane leap.

Bedlam
truthers just like yourself...

Um, I'm not a 'truther'. I was going to get into a rebuttal, but reading that, frankly pisses me off.

I went through my advanced school in the Army with a guy who had actually signed up to be one of the people carrying the so called "back pack nuke". At they time they were giving a pretty sweet enlistment bonus to him. But they cancelled the program before he finished the school. This was around 1985-86.

The back back nuke was not really designed as a massive weapon. It's main purpose was to clear large obstacles and destroy key infrastructures like bridges and damns. It was also designed to slow down advancing troops through choke points.